


(Not So) Super Bowl

by laheysmythes



Category: It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia
Genre: Canon Compliant, Denial of Feelings, M/M, Super Bowl, what dennis was doing during the super bowl
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-14
Updated: 2019-04-14
Packaged: 2020-01-13 01:05:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,354
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18458312
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/laheysmythes/pseuds/laheysmythes
Summary: Dennis decides to come back to Philadelphia to watch the Super Bowl with the gang, chaos ensues.





	(Not So) Super Bowl

**Author's Note:**

> Hey guys so it's my first time writing for iasip and I really hope I got it right. I ship macdennis so much it was about time I wrote something for them.

_ 5:30PM _ __   
_ On a Sunday _ _   
_ __ Philadelphia, PA

Dennis tells himself that the reason he came back to Philadelphia is just for the Super Bowl and afterwards he’ll go back to his life in North Dakota. His great,  miserable life in North Dakota.

Being a father wasn’t as easy as he thought he was going to be but at least he was  _ trying _ , which is more than his asshole of a father-but-not-really Frank ever did. All he did was throw money at them and spent his time at the office or on business trips, which were code for banging women. Whatever.

Anyways, Dennis had a good feeling about this Super Bowl, maybe the Eagles (Go Birds!) would finally win this time. So it felt just right to come back for a weekend and watch the game with the gang, maybe get blackout drunk if they didn’t win (or even if they win), just like old times.

It’s not that he missed the gang, no - if anyone missed anyone it was the gang missing Dennis. He didn’t need them, he was thriving out there in North Dakota. Maybe he wasn’t exactly  _ thriving _ per se, but it was good. Okay, it was  _ fine _ , but the gang didn’t need to know. He would take no questions.

As the Uber dropped him off at the bar, he had a smile in his face because he missed his baby. His bar. After all, the bar was still on his name and it felt a little bit like coming home, whatever that felt like he was pretty sure this was it. He went straight ahead to grab the doorknob and open the bar but it didn’t open. He rattled the doorknob one more time and nothing. He began knocking.

“Hey open the door!” Dennis continued knocking. “Frank, Charlie, Mac, Dee! Open up!” 

There was no answer, and that’s when he noticed the sign. 

_ Clozed 4 Salmonella Becoz Sooqer BoL. _

“What the…” Dennis narrowed his eyebrows. “Charlie, you illiterate idiot! So which one is it, salmonella or the Super Bowl? Unbelievable.”

He put his ear to the door and there was just silence. No one was at the bar, which is a first. He decided to begin walking towards his old apartment, maybe the gang was gathered there. Of course he leaves and the bar closes. He remembers that when he was there, the bar never closed no matter what day it was. Sure, they were running schemes all the time, and their schedule was unreliable as shit, but at least they had the bar open for like an hour or two every day.

Once he arrived to his and Mac’s apartment - it was still  _ their  _ apartment after all - he was lucky enough to find out his old key still worked. But to his surprise, he found the apartment empty. 

“Hello? Mac?” Dennis called out, and despite him saying he didn’t miss Mac or didn’t want to see him, part of him hoped he would be here. He was met with complete silence.

He went to what used to be his old room and found it exactly as he left it - it was like no one had touched it while he was gone. He felt a sense of disappointment somehow, he could’ve bet that he was going to find out that Mac was sleeping there or something, but there was no trace of him.

He dropped his bag on top of the bed to continue looking around the apartment. He opened Mac’s room and found the duster on top of Mac’s bed, the dildo bike somewhere in the corner of the room. The room had a mattress, crucifixes, pictures of saints and Luther… it all seemed so Mac.

Not a picture of Dennis in sight though. It made him scoff.

He went to the kitchen and opened the fridge only to find it empty. Not even beer was there, only a tupperware left with leftover mac n cheese, and Dennis didn’t even dare to touch it. 

The trashcan in the kitchen was filled with empty beer cans, and he felt a slight pinch of remorse in his chest. He has wondered how Mac had been coping with him leaving, since they were inseparable before… he left. Did Mac miss him? Was he drinking himself to sleep, hoping Dennis would come back? Did he even bothered to keep asking for his real number after Dennis gave him a fake one?

Dennis shook his head, not wanting to dwell on any of those thoughts. He needed to find the gang to watch the Super Bowl. Yeah, that’s what he had to do.

Next stop was Dee’s apartment. After all, she had a big TV and they have always gathered at her apartment, much to her dismay, to watch movies and shit. He still kept a copy of a key to her apartment ever since the suburbs disaster, and he hadn’t bothered to return it. Luckily for him she didn’t change the locks, so he made it inside only to find the apartment empty.

“Dee? Hello?” Dennis yelled but no one answered him. There was only deafening silence.

The apartment was a goddamn mess, it looked like it had been robbed or something. Everything on the kitchen was everywhere, especially on the floor. The living room was a mess, and there were boxes everywhere that had written ‘ _ Frank’s stuff’ _ over it. Wait, was Frank living here?

“What the hell?” Dennis exclaimed as he pulled a pair of ugly yellow crocs out of the top box, immediately dropping them as if they were contaminated. Knowing Frank, he probably used them to go to the sewers and shit. Disgusting.

He opened the doors to Dee’s bedroom and her bed was a  _ mess _ , there was popcorn everywhere as if a child had invaded her room and dropped a mess on it. Of course the bitch never cleaned it, for fucks sake there was even underwear on the floor. Ew, Dennis had enough of this.

He left to go straight to Charlie’s apartment. Luckily for him, Charlie never locked the door - and let’s be honest, who would like to steal from him when all he had in his apartment was cat food, rats, beer and it smelled like piss everywhere. The apartment was empty, but to his surprise it seemed… cleaner. The piss cans were nowhere to be found, same with the cat food. 

What the fuck had happened while he was gone???

He had run out of places to look for the gang, so defeated, he went to the nearest Applebee’s to drown his sorrows in beer and pot sticks. The place was  _ packed _ , and after half an hour he only managed to get a spot at the bar. 

While looking for the gang he had missed more than half of the super bowl since he had been walking - he couldn’t find his Range Rover anywhere, he assumed the assholes took it to leave wherever the fuck they went. 

The Eagles were winning 22 to 12 (Go Birds!), so at least something good was happening. But despite this, Dennis felt somewhat… empty. No matter the amount of pot sticks he ate and beer he drank right now at this fine establishment, it wasn’t the same. It was not what he had planned. 

He was pretty clear with himself: he was gonna fly to Philly, watch the game with the gang, get plastered, then go back. And if there was one thing Dennis hated was when his plans went sideways. To top it all off, the Patriots scored and some savage idiot knocked his glass of beer all over Dennis’ food. 

“Goddamnit!” Dennis yelled but he was pretty much ignored by the very angry crowd of Eagles fans raging over the score. If that wasn’t enough, they were showing fans’ reactions at the stadium, and nothing could’ve prepared him for what he saw. The gang was there?!?! And they invited the waitress, and even…  _ Rex?!?! _

“They went to the game  _ WITHOUT ME?! _ ” Dennis screeched. Seething with rage now, he dropped a couple of bucks in the bar and made his way out of the place because he was gonna explode if he kept being surrounded by incompetent idiots, savage idiots. Everything was goddamn  _ ruined _ , the Eagles were going to lose, he had wasted money coming back to Philly when the gang was in goddamn Minnesota.

He let out a maniac laugh because  _ the irony _   that he was all the way over here in Philadelphia, and the gang was in a state that was literally next to North Dakota. Of course it’d only happen to him, because everything  _ sucked _ . His life sucked, being a dad sucked, working at a bar that he didn’t own to pay rent in a shitty apartment in the middle of Nowhere, North Dakota fucking sucked, and not being able to watch the Super Bowl with the only people he wanted to watch it with sucked ass.

At this point this entire day was ruined and the only thing left was to get blackout drunk as he intended, and he refused to pay for the booze. He decided to walk back to the bar, maybe that way the anger he still felt inside would dissipate a little bit, before he decided to do something drastic, like going to get his RPG (wherever the fuck Mac stored it anyways?) and blow something up.

Halfway through he heard nearby places burst with uncontrollable cheers, and he checked his clock. At this time the Super Bowl had probably ended, and maybe the Eagles had won. Well, that was a first, go birds. Still, he didn’t feel the least bit happy at all, which sucked.

He got to the bar like half an hour later and used the key he had in his keychain, which in retrospect, he should’ve done it the first time he got here instead of wandering around half of Philadelphia, but whatever. He was shocked to find a goddamn mess in the bar, and a bleeding, passed out Charlie on the floor.

“Jesus Christ, Charlie…” Dennis carefully made his way through all of the string, careful not to fall into any of the traps Charlie put. The bar seemed like a whole maze for idiots, the floor stained with green paint, crimson blood and a yellow liquid that for his sake decided to believe it was beer.

Once he got to where Charlie was passed out on the floor, he carefully worked on releasing his leg from the bear trap, using his thumbs to press the lever that would release it. Charlie had lost a lot of blood by now, and Dennis wondered how the gang had left him behind. No man gets left behind!

But then once again they had left Dennis behind in Philly on the day of the super bowl. He didn’t want to think how he was the one who left them behind first.

“Charlie, wake up,” Dennis began shaking him but the guy wouldn’t wake up.

_ Drastic measures, _ he thought to himself and mustered the strength enough to give Charlie a slap in the face, hard enough to wake him up. It did work, because Charlie began screaming something incoherent and clinging to Dennis.

“Hey buddy, what the hell happened to you,” Dennis began talking to Charlie in that voice he used when the guy was out of it, which was almost… all the time, since he was either drunk or high on paint fumes.

“Ar- are you liek a ghos-st or  _ shit _ ,” Charlie slurred his words, barely passing out again.”D-did w-we won?”

“Yeah buddy, we won,” Dennis said and began putting one of Charlie’s arms around his neck to get him to stand up. “You need a hospital.”

“I knew ghosts were real,” Charlie whispered as he was dragged by Dennis out of the bar.

“Why’s that?” Dennis decided to humor him because he couldn’t have Charlie passing out again, he was pretty sure he could die if he fell asleep or something.

“Cuz the real Dennis ‘snt here,” Charlie slurred his words again and suddenly Dennis was hit with that guilt in his chest. That isn’t fair, he was here, of course he was- that just made Dennis sound like he abandoned them all.

_ But you did, _ the voice in his head reminded him. Times like these he hated himself.

He focused on getting Charlie to the nearest hospital, and then later on he could get answers out of him. Like what the hell was he thinking turning the bar into a rat maze, or why the fuck was Mac spending time with  _ Rex _ , or- or… if they missed him at all.

When he entered the ER everyone turned to stare at them in shock, and nurses rushed to grab Charlie and put him in the nearest wheelchair available to take him to examination.

“What happened to him?” A nurse asked Dennis.

“I found him like this at an empty bar, I’m pretty sure he did this to himself.”

“Yeah I did this to myself,” Charlie repeated Dennis’ words, grinning and his teeth were green.

“And I’m pretty sure he drank paint,” Dennis pointed towards Charlie’s mouth. “And God knows what else.”

“I drank green paint,” Charlie barely said. “And I ate a rat.”

Both Dennis and the nurse turned to look disgusted at Charlie as he was taken inside the hall that was restricted to patients and staff only.

“We need someone to fill out his contact information and health insurance, do you know this man?” The nurse said to Dennis and he nodded.

“Yeah, he’s a friend,” Dennis sighed and took the clipboard and the pen to fill out the information. He put Frank’s health insurance and his credit card to pay for Charlie’s stay, since it was the  _ least _ he could do for leaving him behind.

It was well past 2am at this point and surprisingly the emergency room was nearly empty. Dennis was tired of the rollercoaster of emotions that had been this day, he felt exhausted and like he had aged ten years in the span of a day.

He didn’t know in what moment he drifted off and fell asleep.

 

_ “It’s a gift, I got it for you,” he heard Mac whisper tenderly. His eyes looking at him like they were the only ones in the world and Dennis was the best thing he had ever laid eyes on. _

_ “For me?” Dennis choked up, voice barely coming up as a whisper. He was shocked, he felt his heart pounding in his chest, in his ears, his eyes beginning to water.  _

_ “Yeah.” _

_ No one in his goddamn life had ever bothered to give him anything - not his parents, not his twin sister, nobody. And here he was, Mac, his roommate, his best friend, his blood brother, proving that he knows him better than he knows himself, giving him a gift he has always wanted, the only thing he has ever wanted. _

_ Screw the RPG, the only thing he ever wanted was for someone to give a fuck about him, to give him a gift, to make him feel special.  _

_ And right now? Dennis was feeling too much. Too much, too soon, emotions he was sure he had never felt before and didn’t know how to categorize. Mac really loved him, no matter how fucked up he was as a person, or emotionally, or mentally. He had stayed with him through thick and thin no matter what. _

_ He looked down to the crate only to find it… empty? What the fuck? _

_ He knew this like the palm of his hand, he’s been here multiple times before, pretty much every night, he knows what’s gonna happen next. He was supposed to look down and find the RPG. _

_ Instead, he gets pushed to the side to the point that he almost loses his footing and falls, by none other than… Rex? _

_ What the fuck? _

_ Rex kneels down and grabs what seems to be some kind of special gym equipment that Dennis can’t be bothered to know the name of. He gets basically pushed to the back, to second place, witnessing an intimate moment, his moment, being stolen by Rex. _

_ “You got this for me?” Rex sounds enthusiastic, happy even, stoked to receive this gift. “That’s awesome dude! How did you know?” _

_ “Because I know you man!” Mac replies enthusiastically and they both grin at each other. _

_ No no no no no, no. This cannot be happening, this- this moment cannot be tainted, this is his moment goddamn it! _

_ “No no no, you got it all wrong Mac, it’s me! You’re supposed to give me an RPG, the gift is for me-” Dennis is on the verge of tears and anger as he gets shushed by the other members of the gang. _

_ He watches in disbelief as Rex tells Mac that he loves him, and watches as they go for a passionate kiss, the gift discarded on the crate. He watches as the rest of the gang cheers ‘Finally, it was about damn time’ and they proceed to leave, their attention span gone to pulling worms out of Frank’s ass. _

_ The pain he’s feeling right now is too real, too strong, he feels like he’s choking, he’s gasping for air but everything’s too hot, the tears just keep spilling and he’s frozen in place as he sees Mac and Rex happy side by side, leaving the bar, leaving him behind. _

 

He wakes up screaming and scares the couple nurses and visitors in the waiting room. He’s sweating like a pig and he’s pretty sure he had been crying while he was asleep. Well, he’s never going to sleep again that’s for sure. That was one of the worst nightmares he’s had in his entire life. Goddamn Rex, he hates him so much. Getting all close and friendly with Mac while he was gone being a father, that’s so fucking unfair. 

Forgetting that Charlie was even checked in the ER, he proceeds to leave and makes his way to the bar. He needs to do something before he loses his mind with thoughts of Rex and Mac together. 

All the walk he seethes in rage, he swears he wants to kill the guy for stealing his place. He makes it to the bar walking in record time, his anger clearly fueling him. 

He opens the bar and goes to crack open a bottle of beer, following to go to the basement for Charlie’s cleaning tools. He begins pulling every string, shoving it in a trash bag with a little too much force, begins unscrewing the bolts for the other traps Charlie set, unplugging every connection, breaking every other object before sweeping it off angrily. 

He’s filled four trashbags already and drank six beers as he begins to scrub the floor with bleach to remove the stains of green paint, blood and what he knows it’s piss. He scrubs and scrubs til his fingers hurt, til his hands are raw, scrubs as tears begin falling to the floor because of  _ fucking _ course this is his fault for leaving, and the self-hate he has always felt is ever present in the moment. 

He had a good thing going with Mac, a good  _ friendship,  _ and he had bolted for what? For a shitty life? For a normal, boring, awful life? He basically went from bad to worse, and now Mac had replaced him, the gang probably didn’t miss him, and he was still the same loser he’s always been, but without his friends.

“Fuck!” He gets up, grabs the bottle of beer and smashes it across the bar in a fit of anger. He proceeds to scream in anger just like that time he went off against the idiot who called his range rover a starter car. Once he lets it out, he begins breathing in and out until he’s a bit composed. He sniffles, and pulls another bottle of beer from behind the counter.

He finishes cleaning the bar until it looks like it did once, just like it did when he was here. He sat on a stool and admired his bar, his baby. He would always have this bar. He could always come back.

But he didn’t want to be a screw up like Frank and abandon his kid. Goddamn it

The sun is getting out and it’s past 6am, he hasn’t slept ever since that awful nightmare at the hospital. He locks up the bar and stares at the sign on the door. The gang isn’t back and they probably won’t be back until later. Just as his mind is turning against him and starts imagining Mac and Rex fucking in a suite at a five-star hotel, he rips the sign to shreds and begins walking to the hospital.

 

When he gets to the hospital Charlie is awake now. The doctors told him he was intoxicated and had lost a lot of blood. They had given him some blood transfusions, put a cast on his lacerated leg and pumped his stomach to get rid of the paint and the rat he had eaten.

But other than that, he was fine. Dennis swore if there ever was a plague, Charlie would be the sole survivor because he’s constantly putting himself through dangerous situations and inhaling toxic chemicals on a daily basis and he always pulls through. If he had any brain cells left, who knows.

He walks into Charlie’s room and finds the guy awake, staring at him confusedly.

“Dennis? Am I seeing ghosts?” Charlie asks confused.

“No, you goddamn idiot, I’m real,” Dennis snaps and Charlie just nods.

“What happened man?” Charlie asks.

“Well, I was hoping you could tell me, since you turned the bar into a goddamn maze that I had to clean up,” Dennis said but Charlie was straight up ignoring him.

“Where’s the rest of the gang?” Charlie looked around everywhere but found no one.

“They left to the Super Bowl.”

“The Super…  _ oh _ , right, yeah it is the Super Bowl,” Charlie nodded like suddenly everything was making sense.

“The Eagles won,” Dennis said. Immediately both of them went  _ Go Birds! _ without questioning it.

“So I missed it? Oh man, I didn’t get to do my superstitions,” Charlie seemed bummed by this.

“Last I knew you drank green paint and ate a live rat, so I’m pretty sure you did buddy,” Dennis said, patting him on the arm. “So, listen Charlie, I have some questions I was hoping you could answer.”

“Like what?”

“Like why are Mac and Rex hanging out now?” Dennis went straight for it. He needed to know so he could plot further what to do to solve this, to get rid of Rex.

“Did you really just come here to talk about Mac? Because I’m tired of you talking about Mac all the time-”

“No- goddamn it Charlie, I don’t always talk about Mac!”

“Yeah you do.”

“No I  _ don’t. _ Next question, why is Frank’s stuff on Dee’s apartment?”

“Because Frank lives with Dee now,” Charlie said it so naturally like there wasn’t anything wrong, like he hadn’t been living with the man for a decade.

“Why doesn’t he live with you anymore?” Dennis asked.

“Because I’m banging the waitress now, and there was no room for him anymore, and the waitress finds him disgusting and-”

“Hold on a second, you’re telling me  _ you’re _ banging the waitress? After all these years of stalking her?” Dennis couldn’t believe this. Things had gotten so goddamn weird since he left, and he didn’t like it one bit.

“Dude, I wasn’t stalking her, I was making sure-”

“Yeah, whatever, I don’t care. So if you’re banging her, does that mean Mac and Rex are-”

“Here you go again, talking about Mac, why don’t you just ask him-”

“Can you just answer the goddamn question-”

“You’re always talking about Mac and I’m tired dude-”

“Yes or no Charlie!” Dennis yelled, his patience running thin.

“Yes, no, I don’t know!” Charlie yelled back, the machine beeping because his blood pressure rose as he got exalted. “Why do you care anyways didn’t you say you hate Mac?”

“Yes, I hate him, Charlie, nothing has changed, I just-” Dennis  _ hated  _ the fact that Mac had replaced him so easily, replaced him with someone who he clearly considers a better everything than Dennis. The guy was ugly as shit if he said so himself. “Too much of the dynamic has changed, and I don’t like it.”

“Well you have no say it in really, since you left to raise a child or whatever,” Charlie said, playing with the hospital bracelet.

Dennis had forgotten how straightforward Charlie could be. He didn’t really say things with malice and intent to hurt, but he always managed to say the truth. Dennis hated that he left and the gang moved on without giving any fucks about him.

Maybe he could stay for a bit, change his plane ticket, stick around to see the gang and get everything back to normal. So he could get rid of Rex. So he could see Mac again, maybe take him out to Guigino’s… it’s been a while since they had gone in their monthly dinners. Maybe give him the right number so they could start texting again, so they could maybe get plastered together and be like they were before, before it all went to shit.

“By the way,” Charlie chuckles. “Mac shot your RPG dude.”

_ “What?!”  _ Dennis screeches just like he did when he saw the gang on TV, Charlie just covers his ears and starts mumbling about Dennis yelling too much.

So Dennis said fuck Mac and fuck the gang, and in a fit of anger he went to his apartment, grabbed his things, made sure to wreck Mac’s bedroom and took the first flight back to North Dakota before he could see any of the gang because he was  _ sure _ he was gonna commit murder if he saw Mac right now, with Rex, after the bastard had the audacity to shoot his RPG.

**Author's Note:**

> So yeah, canon compliant but pretty much this is what I imagine happened the time of the Super Bowl, nothing goes like Dennis wanted. I'm gonna be writing more fics, this time with them actually interacting so hopefully stay tuned :D  
> -Alejandra
> 
> Come yell at me on my tumblr @laheyjackson


End file.
